


A Long Road Home

by thursday_kat



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Dreaming, Going Home, Lost - Freeform, M/M, happyish ending, mentioned domestic violence, possible suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursday_kat/pseuds/thursday_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of a mid-life crisis, Arthur finds his way home.  And then finds his way home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long Road Home

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this was done a few days ago and then my brain zigged when I wanted it to zag and now it’s late. Sigh. That said, I think I’m actually pleased with this one! Also, sappy ending is sappy. WTF.

****  
He’s in the middle of a meeting when it happens. Around him, the team he’s currently working with are explaining the basic ideas behind dream sharing to one Mr. Andersen. Callum is attempting to verbally explain how architecture in dreams works and, if the frown pulling between Mr. Andersen’s eyes is anything to go by, he’s doing a poor job of it.

Arthur has already interrupted once, to explain the unexplainable, and he’d not missed the eye roll that Bridget had directed at Callum. All they see are the dollar signs and the glamour of being the team to help Andersen build what amounts to a glorified dream den. And no doubt, there’s a lot of money to be had, but they are young and reckless (so young and so reckless - he and Cobb, back in the day, were still miles ahead of these fresh faced college grads) and they drive Arthur mad. Eames, even at his worst was always a professional. Cobb, despite obvious mental imbalances, got the fucking job done. This team is neither professional nor are they likely to get the job done (not without his help at least). Inwardly he curses Finn and the favor he called in.

It’s the most legit and legal job Arthur’s had in a very long time, and sitting there, surrounded by young punks who have no respect for the game or the people whose blood, sweat and tears made dream sharing the phenomenon it is, he realizes that he is done, that the fire has gone out of him entirely. There’s not even an ember of it left.

It takes five more meetings with Mr. Andersen to finalize the details. For Arthur, it’s two weeks of torture, of slogging through information and running down chemists and reading through documents rife with legalese regarding the use of the PASIV unit with civilians. (He might be burned out, but he’s still got his pride, and Arthur delivers, same as he always has.)

Once the deal is done, once the money is transfered, Arthur disappears.

****  
It’s been a long and winding road, full of things that Arthur cannot ever tell his family, but they welcome him back with open arms regardless.

The trailer is still as small as it ever was, and his mother is still thin and dark haired, her features even more fey than they were when he was a child. His sister, Olivia, lives in town now, husband and children and white picket fence setting her far apart from the girl he’d once protected in a childhood best forgotten.

“Jamie,” his mother murmurs, her tears hot against his chest, “Love, we thought we’d never seen you back again.”

Olivia is more distant, though she calls him JJ, and her children stare at him wide-eyed as Olivia explains that he is their uncle who works as a spy. (Arthur has never told them what he did, has never told them where he was, and there is a twist of guilt in his gut because he knows that they have invented a hundred different explanations for his extended absence. In all probability, at least half of those are probably closer to the truth than he can ever say.)

He moves into the spare bedroom, pointedly not looking at the fist sized hole that sits behind the door like a wormhole back in time. The room is full of clutter, things collected over a lifetime, and that first night he shares his bed with old stuffed toys and the quilt his grandmother had made for his mother’s wedding.

The next night he shifts the toys but keeps the quilt, wraps it around himself as he methodically kills off a few aliases by dropping a few discrete obituaries into relevant papers. He may as well put up a glaring neon sign saying, “Arthur, supposed best point man in the business, is done.” The relief he expects to come does not appear, but as Arthur has never done anything the easy way, this does not surprise him.

Over the following weeks he shifts the clutter and does all the odds and ends of upkeep that a twenty year old trailer needs. Every few days he takes the time to kill off another version of himself as well. (He does it at night, when the insomnia rages and closing his eyes calls forth too many memories.)

He finds himself visiting Olivia on the weekends, quietly sipping a beer in the backyard as her husband (a total tool, but he treats her alright) grills steaks or burgers and the kids slowly work their way into his orbit, still skittish initially but willing now to show him pictures they’ve draw or new toys they’ve gotten.

****  
It’s summer and Arthur’s on the roof, fixing the shingles for the second time. (He’s sent his mother money over the years but wherever it has gone, it’s not been into the trailer.) He might have been a brilliant point man, but he’s not a great handyman, and he’s swearing at the nail gun when there’s a call from the yard.

“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son.”

Marybeth Gleeson is still blond though she’s gotten curvier as the years have gone by. Arthur climbs down from the roof and they share a beer, talking about nothing in particular. There is a tan line on her ring finger but Arthur doesn’t ask any questions when they stumble into bed together later, tipsy on beer and recollections of their misspent youths. The sex is good but hardly mind blowing and it leaves him even more hollowed out than before. She kisses him sweetly at the door and tries to talk him into staying the night but he politely declines (“I see you’ve finally gotten manners,” she says, grinning at him and obviously unhurt by his refusal, “You were always such a nasty little shit.”)

That night, wide awake at three in the morning, Arthur kills three aliases at once before tumbling into a restless sleep. At some point he dreams, the first time it’s happened since he crawled his way home. It’s a proper dream, not the kind that comes when he’s hovering on the edge of consciousness, and even though he doesn’t remember any of it, .the shock of it wakes him up. When he comes to himself fully he’s on the floor, digging under the bed for the box he’s stashed there.

He may have left the dream share world behind but there are some things that he cannot just simply abandon. (Arthur might be tired and burned out, the world he once inhabited so brilliantly nothing more than a quickly fading star, but some things have become such constants that he cannot do without them.)

He sleeps with Marybeth a few more times, breaks down and pays for a new roof (“I won it at the casino,” he says, offhand and waving away his mother’s protests) and by the time the summer heat is fading into fall, there is only one alias left.

Sitting on the porch in jeans and a t-shirt, the old cat curled and purring in his lap, he comes to the ultimate realization that he cannot kill Arthur. It is his oldest alias, built when he was sixteen and running from hell and towards it simultaneously. He has been Arthur for nearly as long as he was James and even though he knows that he is sliding further from the man Arthur was, he hasn’t not been James in a very long time. (‘James’ is an old coat, tucked into a closet, ill-fitting and shabby but still something useful, if only in remembering.)

****  
In the fall, midway through the dying days of an Indian Summer, he asks the question that has never been broached. They are on the porch, watching the bats wing through the haze of dusk and sipping tea, a nightly ritual nowadays . The cat is on his lap again, and he is rolling a die around in his hand. (It is not his totem, that is sacred, hidden, but it is weighted, and he is learning the feel of it every day.)

“Did he ever come back, after?” He asks, out of the blue and tactless, ashamed even after so many years that he fled, that he never took the time to find out the answer. His mother’s chair stops rocking for a brief moment, the cup of iced tea tipping and sloshing in her hand. In the silence, Arthur swears he can hear the beat of his heart, and his fists ache with the memory of that night.

In a matter of seconds she resumes rocking, the steady creak of the old rocker an odd counterpoint to the traffic just a few blocks off. “No,” she says, finally, and that is that. It is not a conversational sort of no, and it doesn’t invite any more questions. Arthur can see the tremble in her hands and he hates himself almost as much as he hates his father.

They sit in silence as the last of the light fades and the moths begin their nightly worship of the porch light. It doesn’t last though - October turns out to be a good time for painful questions.

“Jamie,” his mother says tentatively, and Arthur realizes that they are going to finally have the other conversation they should have had months ago. “James, are you ok?”

He wonders how he is supposed to answer. It’s a loaded question and the layers of potential answers go so very, very deep. He wants to say, ‘I watched my shithead father beat you for years before I had enough and nearly beat him to death. I lied and cheated my way into and then out of the Marines and I’ve spent the past twelve years or so stealing from people’s minds. I was a brilliant and dedicated thief and I’ve watched those I loved, people who had become my second family, die or disappear or go mad and now I’m back here, as unhappy as I was the day I left.’ The words are there, crowding in his throat but there is no way to say any of it (he really doesn’t know where to start and isn’t that funny in and of itself) and so he sighs. “I’m fine mom, just tired.”

It’s a dirty move, because his mother has never pushed, never pressed, and he sometimes wonders if she isn’t nearly as afraid of him as he was his father. They look the same, even walk the same, and even Arthur is occasionally afraid of the ferocity and brutality that dwell just beneath the surface of his skin. The die rolls endlessly in his hand.

She never does ask about his money (he’s careful, pays only for bits and pieces but he doesn’t have a job and there’s been no mail for him since he landed on her doorstep and no phone calls either), and she doesn’t pester him to get a job or hound him with a hundred unanswerable questions.

But every few weeks she’s taken to asking him if he’s ok and his answer is always the same.

****

Winter finds Arthur still in the spare room, and though the clutter has been boxed, there is nothing there to mark the place as his. A handful of used paperbacks, his beloved laptop and the clothes he’d arrived with are all that he owns. (He has his Glock as well - he’s burned out, not stupid - and even though the likelihood of anyone finding him is slim, it’s a possibility he has to take into account.) It’s freeing and it’s the only thing in the downward spiral of his life that he can appreciate with something approaching humor.

Arthur, always dressed to the nines, his suits like armor around him, now in faded blue jeans and t-shirts from the thrift store. He’s added a few old sweaters to his closet as well and he doesn’t think too carefully about his sudden attachment to the ugliest of the lot.

He and Olivia go to dinner, try to make inroads into the daunting task of learning who the other is after so many years. The kids have stopped being frightened of him, and even though he absolutely refuses to give piggy back rides they are happy to play games with him. (He cannot explain that someone on his back, arms around his neck brings back some memories he’d rather not revisit. That they are children means nothing - he’s been killed by projections that were younger even then them.)

Marybeth moves on, though his mother asks after her weekly, and Arthur feels nothing at her absence. (Others he has felt like a hole in the chest, like losing a lung, but she was nothing more than a pleasant enough diversion, comfortable like the trailer and his mother’s warm hugs.) He knows with certainty that his mother and Olivia had hoped that she would haul him out of the quiet, desperate funk he’s sunk in to and he doesn’t have the heart to cut them off when they start trying to hook him up with other girls he knew ‘back when’.

His days are quiet and slow and even though he should be bored (is in fact bored) he has no desire to do anything more. The trailer is looking better than it has in years, and half of the old ladies in the park look to him to sort out their email issues and while it’s hardly a life at all, for now it is enough.

Christmas is a small affair, and he slips out to town to purchase gifts for his family. In the window of a shop he sees something that reminds him of his old life, of his old friends, and he cannot resist the impulse to reach out, even from a distance. Two days later he makes the long drive to Chicago and posts the box to California, addressed to Phillipa and James Cobb. (He leaves off the return address and Chicago is large enough, nameless enough, to hide his whereabouts)

It is with no small amount of wonder that Arthur realizes that it’s been nearly a year since he walked away from the dream community. A year since he plugged in and walked through the hallowed halls of others’ subconscious. He is surprised to find that he misses it, not with the fierce longing of a lost love but with the quiet and gentle regret of missing something that has long since passed.

****  
It’s mid-February, and they are halfway through a dinner of salisbury steak and homemade mashed potatoes (there are heart shaped chocolates wrapped in foil in the middle of the table) when his mother drops a bomb on him.

“There was the strangest phone call today, some man named Conner, looking for an Arthur something-or-other. Well, I told him that there was no one here by that name and he apologized and wouldn’t you know it, we ended up talking for nearly an hour. He had a British accent, I could have listened to him for hours.”

She rambles on, talking about how polite he was and how lovely he was to talk to but Arthur isn’t listening, his dinner sawdust in his mouth.

If that had been Eames, and Eames has gotten a hold of the number to the trailer, than he most certainly knows that Arthur is here. And while Arthur’s mind knows that it could mean nothing, probably means nothing (in fact, may mean something truly horrible) his heart beats a traitorous tattoo in his chest.

Because Eames had vanished from dream share a full two years before Arthur and nothing Arthur had tried managed to turn up any trace of the man. After dinner he excuses himself and spends hours on his laptop, digging for any evidence that Eames is still alive. There is nothing substantial, nothing out of the ordinary but Arthur has a gut feeling and his intuition has always been good. Carefully, he sets out a few feelers and tries not to feel hopeful. (It doesn’t make sense, because even though they worked together many times, they have never been terribly close. There was always too much catching on each other’s rough spots and petty drama and Arthur is startled by how desperately he wants this to be real. How much he wants a second chance.)

That night his dreams are full of Eames, of the man he remembered him to be, not the ghost he had built after his disappearance. His brain puts them into a different life, and it is beautiful and unattainable and Arthur wakes with a weight in his chest.

He takes sleeping pills for the entire next week (they work like shit, and leave him groggy as hell, but he doesn’t dream) and he tries to ignore his laptop, instead burying himself in the life he’s built around himself.

****

Spring is a rainy, dreary affair, and Arthur finds himself with less and less patience for the slow moving life he’d adopted. He doctors his resume and lands a job at the local bank - a far cry from the world he had once inhabited, but he feels focused and in control for the first time in a long time.

(He spends his days coming up with ways to relieve the bank of it’s money. He builds mazes in his mind for each of the managers, for the CEO and runs through risk assessments for all of it.)

Two weeks later, eating a quiet lunch with Olivia she reaches across the table and grabs his hands. “You’re looking better,” she says, “When you came home, you looked like a man about to vanish.”

Arthur has no response to this, just smiles at her and flicks a french fry at her across the table.

****  
It’s the summer again, and Arthur feels a lifetime away from where he’d been only a year ago. The neighbor’s kids are setting off poppers and Arthur is in his favorite chair, watching the last of the sunset and drinking his mother’s sweet tea. Down the road, movement pulls his gaze and he watches with interest (and anticipation, and fear, oh god, so much fear) as a fellow lost soul emerges from the gloom.

Eames looks older, his hair longer and his face more stubbled, and he is limping, favoring his right leg though Arthur does not know if it’s an old injury or not. They are staring at each other, unspeaking, when his mother emerges from the trailer.

“Jamie, did you want any more… Oh,” she says, startled by the strange man standing in her yard.

“I’m Conner,” Eames says, playing up the accent and flashing his brightest smile, “We spoke on the phone a few months ago.”

“Oh,” she says again, her confusion obvious. It’s not often that a stranger spoken to months ago just shows up in the yard.

“It’s ok, mom,” Arthur says, “He’s an old friend.” She looks at his sideways, seems ready to actually (finally) say something but instead she just nods and tells him to be safe.

“Friend?” Eames asks as the walk down the circuitous streets of the park, “Hardly friends darling.”

“True. More than friends in some ways,” Arthur says, feeling raw and lost and desperately wishing for his totem. The new die is nothing more than a barely passable replacement in his hand. Without thinking, he drops it and crushes it beneath his shoe.

Eames smiles at him, and it’s a true smile, not one of his showy ones - it isn’t meant to cajole or tease. They walk on, their conversation deceptively casual as they touch and leave topic after topic. Eames has not spoken to Cobb recently, but he knows that Ariadne is well. He’d heard of the job in Vegas (calls Finn a dirty bastard for dumping the job on Arthur) but is ignorant of any of the particulars. Arthur gives him the bare bones of it and the debate the pros and cons of legal dream dens.

“Why are you here?” Arthur asks eventually, and this is the only thing he has wanted to know since Eames appeared.

“Because you were lost, darling.” Eames grabs his hand, holds on tight until Arthur flinches at the pain in his knuckles. “No one could find you forever and ever. It’s time to wake up, Arthur, we miss you.”

They are back at the trailer even though Arthur doesn’t remember walking there, and his mother is on the porch, staring out into the world. Everything is silent, eerily so, and from within the house there is a warm glow.

“Fuck,” he says, more to himself than to Eames, and they shift carefully across the porch, though Arthur’s mind fights against the idea that this woman, who has loved him so completely and without question for the past year and a half, could turn on him now.

And Arthur knows with absolute certainty what he will find in the box under his bed, the one with his Glock and his suit and his real totem. Taking Eames hand, he leads him through the door as the world begins to crumble around them.

****  
Months later he goes to his real childhood home. The trailer is not there of course, and his mom is a lifetime away from him, Olivia just about as lost. Eames stands at his side, curled into his coat against the chill, and more than once his hand reaches out to touch Arthur, as though he can soothe him with nothing more than the gentle press of his fingertips. (It’s true, so true, but Arthur will not tell him.)

“Do you want to find them?” He asks Arthur later, once they’re tucked into the rental car and winging their way back Chicago. (From there to Seattle and then on to Minsk, not for jobs but for vacation, for healing.)

“I think so,” he says. It’s been a long slow road of recovery (‘You just plugged yourself in, Arthur, and you didn’t wake up. You were half dead by the time someone found you…’ Ariadne is angry at him and nothing he says will convince her that it wasn’t intentional) but he feels like he’s making inroads. As though, maybe, the time bomb that had lurked for so long inside of him is mostly disarmed.

“Thanks,” he says a while later, half asleep to the the hum of the road beneath the tires.

“For what? Coming to get you? You'ld have done the same for me.” Eames twines his fingers through Arthur’s and pulls their joined hands to his mouth, kissing each of Arthur’s knuckles. Arthur flushes and tugs his hand away, still sometimes confused between this reality (where Eames is his, has been his for years) and the world of his dream. Eames looks over at him and smiles, not seeming to care that Arthur is still mostly broken, that he is rebuilding himself every single day and that there are pieces that are missing or lost.

“It’ll be ok, love,” he says, his voice warm and sure and Arthur believes him.  



End file.
